Daily Archives: 28/02/2014

Last night I had the most fantastic conversation with Veronica Valli. She writes a blog which you can find here and she wrote the book ‘Why You Drink and How to Stop: The Journey to Freedom’.

During our long conversation about our journeys through drinking and drug taking (we were both part of the rave generation) to sobriety she mentioned a film I hadn’t heard of and I’m so glad she did.

It’s called A Royal Hangover and looks superb. The synopsis reads:

Forget the bad weather. Forget the crooked teeth. Forget the quiet, reserved, tea-drinking aristocrat. We are fast painting a new image of Britain: an image of a nation with a drinking problem.

British adults now drink on average 180 bottles of wine a year, or 1137 pints of beer. This means that we Brits now officially drink more alcohol than we drink tea. We drink when we go out, and we drink when we stay in. We even drink BEFORE we go out to drink. It’s almost as if alcohol has become an essential prelude to any form of social engagement: a beer before the date with the hot girl, a couple of vodkas before work, a bottle of whisky before that dreaded trip to the dentist.

Whereas alcohol consumption across Europe has steadily decreased over the past 40 years, in Britain it has risen dramatically, with nearly a 50% rise in alcohol related hospital admissions in the past 10 years alone. Alcohol abuse causes 20,000 deaths and £22 billion of damage to our society each year, and we are showing no signs of slowing down. We start drinking younger and are drinking more and more.

Here is the trailer that was only released on Monday to wet your appetite:

I am very excited about this and am not sure when it is due for release but will be following any news avidly and will let you know the minute I hear when it’s out 🙂

Edited to add:

I had an email from Arthur Cauty the Director, Writer and Producer of this documentary and if you can help with promoting this via your social media networks then even better!

Hi Lucy,

That’s very kind of you to feature the film on your blog – we appreciate all the support and promotion we can get. Simply posting the trailer on twitter, facebook etc, or inviting people to our Facebook page is a huge help if you’re able to do that.